New York Hip-Hop Website Birthplace Magazine Shuts Down Editorial Side, Will Maintain Event Calendar

    By
    Birthplace Magazine
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    Birthplace Magazine editorial

    The online publication will continue to host an area-wide hip-hop event calendar, listing concerts, independent shows, seminars, art shows and more.

    For nearly ten years, Birthplace Magazine has been covering New York City’s hip-hop music and culture scene, launching during a time when most major outlets and bloggers had begun to shun the city in favor of covering regions that were exporting a different style of rap music.

    “The industry was chasing ringtone rap and embedding themselves in the strip-club economy in places like Houston and Atlanta,” says Manny Faces, the award-winning, new media journalist who founded the site. “While it all-too-often simplified the artform, it was becoming increasingly lucrative. New York was more interested in keeping true to its roots, and while the area was still advancing the artform in many ways, few were paying attention.”

    With years’ experience building acclaimed news websites as well as having been an artist, producer and DJ himself, Manny Faces decided to launch BirthplaceMag.com as a blog in 2008 to combat the dearth of quality, local hip-hop coverage. Over the years, it became a moderate-sized online destination, at one time averaging more than 30,000 visitors a month, and was the only site dedicated to covering artists, events, business and cultural issues exclusively from the area.

    To supplement the magazine site, Manny Faces launched a companion, live, call-in talk show podcast, The NY Hip Hop Report, which ran from 2012-2014 and was reinvented as a Facebook live television broadcast program in 2017.

    “I tried my best to cover the music, art, culture and people of this sacred hip-hop landscape with integrity and honor,” he reports. “But I always insisted we remain truly independent and stay away from easy ways to make money that often cheapened the culture. As a result, it was difficult to turn these outlets into fully sustainable entities.”

    Manny Faces cites that lack of sustainability as a factor in deciding to shutter the editorial side of the site but adds that the overall industry, as well as his personal mission, have also changed somewhat.

    “Blogs don’t break artists anymore. Reviews in the streaming age are nearly worthless. People are discovering artists through Spotify playlists and YouTube or Soundcloud,” he says.

    “Even though some writers offered to help fill in the gaps, I found myself largely unable to keep managing the whole process — editing pieces and photos, maintaining the calendar, maintaining the technical side of the site, and still continue reporting on all the incredible things happening in New York hip-hop. Once I started to work on The Center for Hip-Hop Advocacy, I realized I couldn’t maintain the frequency, quality and influence that BirthplaceMag.com — and New York hip-hop — deserves.”

    The non-profit, which Manny Faces founded in late 2015, seeks to increase public awareness and understanding about hip-hop music and culture, using journalism, original research, public outreach and media watchdogging. The organization has spoken out against cultural insensitivity toward hip-hop by mainstream media outlets and public figures, and recently hosted its inaugural “Hip-Hop Community Solution Cipher” at LIU Brooklyn, partnering with music and technology initiative Hip-Hop Hacks to examine and amplify ways that hip-hop music and culture are being used in ways that positively benefit society.

    “As painful as it is to put aside something I enjoy doing so much, it is important that I fully shift my efforts at this time,” Manny Faces states. “Despite being a worldwide, ubiquitous phenomenon, hip-hop as a culture is being very poorly represented outside of a few small circles, and collectively, it needs to fight against bias, misappropriation, mischaracterization and misunderstanding before it succumbs to widespread cultural erasure. I want to help combat that.”

    In the meantime, Birthplace Magazine’s archives and renowned event calendar will remain available. “That calendar has become a valuable resource for folks to find out what’s happening in the real New York hip-hop scene,” he states, “not just what the big radio stations are paid to tell us about.”

    Manny Faces will provide commentary about important hip-hop issues of the day on his blog on www.MannyFaces.com, and will continue to speak at universities and music festivals throughout the world regarding hip-hop music and culture.

    He is also the host and producer of News Beat, a groundbreaking podcast that melds investigative journalism, political and social issues and interviews with experts and thought leaders, all residing on a musical foundation and interspersed with original lyrics by hip-hop artists to punctuate the storytelling.

    “It’s like 60 Minutes and Hamilton had a baby,” Manny Faces proudly states. The series is distributed by Long Island-based Morey Creative Studios and is a collaboration between Manny Faces, artists he hand-picks and veteran journalists with years of award-winning journalism experience. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard,” he says, adding, “Plus, it feels great to be able to bring in some of these supremely talented artists that I’ve been covering all of these years to participate in this powerful storytelling platform we’ve created, exposing injustices and correcting false narratives.”

    Manny Faces says that the Birthplace Magazine site will officially cease regular editorial functions as of January 1, 2018.

    “It’s my baby, and it introduced me to some of the most talented artists and best people I’ve ever met,” Manny Faces laments, “But I look forward to contributing great value to the culture through these other projects.”

    He continues, “I will always look for ways to show love to the artists, entrepreneurs, venues and organizations I admire from the New York area. Despite a recent surge of attention toward rappers from our region, a lot of folks still don’t fully understand what ‘New York hip-hop’ truly consists of. So, we might have to pop back in from time to time to help set the record straight, just like we’ve been doing for all these years.”